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‘Pop Music Stinks And We Have The Proof’.*

Without straying from my main topic “Valencia and Music“, this time I have to move to Barcelona, where lives now the protagonist of this new post.

LasDosCes is the name of a blog written by a native from Valencia that talks about science through its relationship with culture, in particular I normally focus my reading on music-related entries, so I thought about posting this one that states:

Isn’t it always the same? This question could be easily posed while listening to the music of any mainstream radio station in a western country.

That’s the conclusion of scientists at the Spanish National Research Council, according to a study of 465,259 songs from the past 50 years.

Broadly speaking, the survey shows that the structure of pop mainstream commercial music has become less complex.

It’s undeniably to say that music seems to borrow passages and chord progressions from other very recent chart tracks.

Is this widely-known sales technique?

To illustrate this statement, please check the following songs:

The Flaming Lips (Fight Test) VERSUS Cat Stevens (Father and son)

Brian Boyd, wrote in the Irish Times, ‘If you’ve felt alienated and irritated by the pop music charts over the past few years, console yourself: it’s been scientifically proven that the music you listened to when you were younger actually was a whole lot better than the beat-infested, pop-assembly-line rubbish that now thumps its way out of your radio and clutters up the charts.’